I have been dealing with an injury called a Morton's Neuroma since early April. It was caused by a bad bike fit of all things. It was compounded by the fact that I trained through the injury as it originally presented just 2 weeks prior to IM Texas 70.3 and I wasn't about to pull out of that. I won't go into too many details here about the injury other than to say that it makes walking very painful and running/biking impossible. After being told I would need surgery that would require me saving up some money, I stopped all training.

​Fast forward 2 months to about 10 days ago and the foot felt remarkably well. I decided to test it out and ran a slow 5k. Still felt pretty good. Ran a few more 5k's over the next few days and got to thinking, "wonder if I can run a sprint tri?" I pulled up my calendar and decided to race a sprint tri this past Saturday. This was done out of pure curiosity as I didn't know where I stood from a fitness standpoint. I knew I had backtracked a lot. My Training Peaks PMC chart (below) said I had dropped about 2 years of fitness in the past 2 months. Seemed like a lot to me. With this race I would find out the truth.

Far left is me starting out as a couch potato. Far right is me after taking 2 months off due to injury.

So, I raced the Cooper Sprint Triathlon in McKinney, TX this weekend. I have participated in this race 3 previous times so it was perfect for me to judge my current vs. past level of conditioning. I don't really do race reports on local sprints so I will keep this succinct. Training Peaks was spot on. I gave a very solid effort. One in which, starting the run, I wasn't sure I was going to finish. I was dying; from a cardio standpoint and not from the previous injury. My lungs and heart seemed to be saying, "Dude, I thought we were on vacation?!?!?" ​However, I pushed through and did finish. My time? Almost spot on for my times 2 years ago. (7/19/14- 1:22:18 vs 7/16/16- 1:22:15). I keep a spreadsheet that matches my finishes vs. the field and it was pretty scary how all the data matched up.

It was a tough pill to swallow. All the data pointed to the fact that I had set the clock back two years. I have been an athlete all my life though and am well aware of the fact that fitness does return surprisingly fast. So I'm not freaking out. I'll pick back up and continue the march forward. It will take some time as I will do my best not to re-injure the foot in the process. I am extremely excited to be able to get back to enjoying the sport I love so this race was a huge win for me!

It is my hope that this post will be something worth looking back on in the future; where I can be proud of the way I dealt with a setback. Took it on the chin and kept marching forward. Maybe inspire somebody else to do the same. ​